Broadway Bomb!!!

Hey guys! Broadway Bomb in NYC is coming up soon! We know you guys are stoked! To tame your stoke we have a few videos for you! hopefully it can tide you over a few more days!Check out this vid from 2009!

In 2009, I went to my first Broadway Bomb with the help of my local shop in Portland, Oregon – Daddies Board Shop. As one of the few committed push racers in the NW, I’ve always wanted to go and check out this very hyped and seemingly scary event. As their slogan says, “You Could Die”. Starting back in 2002 with a dozen or so riders, it is now creeping up on 500. I was in NYC for my first time when I attempted to compete in the craziest traffic in the world with some of the fastest pushers known. There is no such thing as skating casually in traffic through this city, you have to keep up a medium to high pace in order to stay with or ahead of traffic and not get eaten up. When you’re racing, it just adds flame to the fire and rush of assessing danger and constantly striving to find the hole to pass through at a hundred plus intersections in a row! Yes this is vigilante style, never stopping at red lights, and always struggling to keep a high pushing pace while threading the needle through sometimes very small holes.

In 2009 I worked my way into the lead with these NY locals, who push daily through this insanity like it was second nature. In the front of the pack I was approaching a busy intersection when very suddenly I slammed hard into the side of a minivan cab at about 15 mph! I bounced off grabbed my board and took off without hesitation (thanks to my helmet, pads, and slide gloves haha). All the adrenaline kept me focused on getting back on the board right away but the crash was all it took for the other guys to pass by and get ahead through the next intersection. I eventually reeled in a few of them and surprised myself finishing 5th. But the fastest were gone at that point and never to be caught again. The Broadway Bomb is about 8.5 miles but that’s relatively short when you’re dodging cars, buses, people, and cops with the best riders finishing under 30 minutes. Basically there’s no room for mistakes, plus you have to get lucky a bunch of times, and have the lungs and legs of an Iron man to win. Whoever wins this race, truly deserves the Glory of a Champion, and hats off to Mark Schaperow for winning the last two years in a row. Kaspar Spurgeon- Heinrici has done it several times as well in the earlier years. So after a year of remembering what I saw from my point of view, I realized that many have never seen what these guys can do and how they do it. Aiming to go back again in 2010, my goal was not only to do well again, but also to capture it on the new HD GoPro Helmet Camera. Most videos of the Bomb are from the viewpoint of the middle of the race and not from the top dudes busting through the chaos like it was a video game. This is what the Broadway Bomb is all about to these top competitors: http://vimeo.com/16345558

After the race, there was a little drama about some riders getting disqualified for skitching which is a common rule these days in push races. Other outlaw events like Coast Longboarding’s Urban Assault Race and Timeship Racing’s Ditch Slap X-town race do not allow this type of cheating to win either. The Prize giveaway was headed by organizer Ian Nichols who gave out a few hundred dollars to the top male and female racers, plus loads of free swag by the many great sponsors. He also gave some big props to the competitors who traveled the farthest away from places like Australia, France, and Switzerland. Traveling from Oregon myself, I am used to skating with my downhill crew of riders who mostly view endurance races as “silly push races”. Why would you want to tire yourself out like that when there are so many great hills to skate? And for the most part I agree, downhill is my favorite part of skating. Taking corners and negotiating speed with a pack of riders is the best feeling in the world. But in the mostly flat terrain of NYC, the local riders have proven that you don’t need hills to have fun on a longboard. The most basic part of skateboarding is pushing your board around. And they have taken this concept to the ultimate extreme with the up-rise of Push Culture.